Too Frail A Thread
by oncethrown
Summary: "The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from." - John Still There are a lot of sayings about history. About how it's a con. About how important it is. About how it's futile, or necessary, or a joke. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes know the truth though. That past is what actually happened, and history is just what someone wrote down.
1. History: A Noun

**History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.**

**AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil's Dictionary**

* * *

_I hope you're not still trying to enlist, you stupid punk_ Bucky writes after two months in Europe.

_There's no such thing as Glory, Steve, and you'd think a lot less of dying for your country once you'd seen a few men do it. You think you got no right to do less than die like the men over here? I saw a kid get his arm blown off when a bad bullet blew in his gun two days ago. He bled out for his country's faulty ammo. I saw another guy lay down his life going out to take a piss. He got turned into confetti by a kraut land mine._

_Stay home, Steve. I gotta know there's something for me to come home for. _

Bucky feels a hand slap his shoulder. Instinctively, he curls around the letter on his lap, hiding the words on the page under his arm.

"Writing love letters, James?" Dugan asks, adjusting his bowler.

Bucky laughs, even though he feels a little forced. "Nah. Wrote all my love letters this morning.

"Uh huh, and who do you write love letters too?"

"Coupla girls," Bucky tells him. "The girl I went with the night before I shipped out," he leers at Dugan. "_Her friend_. Another dame, the one who serves tables at the diner near my apartment." He digs his hand into his pack and pulls out the small wad of letters he's gotten from those girls and waves it at Dugan. "They all send perfumed letters back, and the waitress can get a little racy."

Dugan laughs loudly. Bucky likes that about him. He's always in a good mood. Quick to joke, and always ready to make a good trade for another man's cigarette ration. The army has made Bucky damn glad that Steve never let him start smoking.

"And who you writing now?" Dugan asked.

Bucky hesitates for a moment, taps his pen against his arm. "Little brother," he finally answers. "Wants to enlist, but he's too sick."

Dugan nods. "Sorry to hear that. He got anyone at home watching out for him?"

"Not since I left," Bucky answers. "I send him most of my pay though."

"Bet he hates that."

Bucky looks up at Dugan in surprise. That's not what most people would say. Most people would start telling Bucky about how lucky Steve is to have someone like him looking after him. Some people would say they were sorry he has to take care of someone like that. They wouldn't say it to either Steve or Bucky's face, but Bucky had heard plenty of people talking about Steve behind his back too. About how his asthma was shameful and maybe someone who spent that much of the winter at death's door wasn't meant to see spring anyway.

The question is at the tip of Bucky's tongue. He's fought at Dugan's side enough times by now, he should be able to ask the man if he has someone… frail at home.

He doesn't ask.

"Bet he does," Bucky says instead. "But he knows how pissed I'll be if he doesn't take it."

Dugan laughs loudly again, and manages to get an answering smile of of Bucky. "Alright. Well. If you'll excuse me, I've got to go catch up on my own love letters."

Bucky nods and turns back to his letter. He stares at it for a few moments, then crumples it and pulls out a new sheet of paper.

_Dear Stevie _ he starts _The Army grub isn't so bad. Definitely better than my mama's cooking, and we both know she'd ag__ree."_


	2. Ink of History

**The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.**

**-Mark Twain**

Up until two weeks ago, Mail Call in the USO was like a holiday, every time. Steve and all the girls ran out to the hallway whenever they heard the producer walking down the hallway, yelling out "Mail Call" and shaking the bag over his head. They all stood back while Hallie H. ran forward to get her letters. She had six brothers, three in the south pacific, and three in europe, plus a fiance in England, and a few friends in the Nurse Corps. She got at least a letter a day, usually three, and would spend the next two days industriously scribbling out replies.

Today, things are a little more sober as the less than jubilant cry of "Mail Call" echoes through the halls and they all walk out of their dressing rooms with more sobriety than glee. Kathy got a condolence letter at the last Mail Call. Her husband had been shot and declared dead in Italy.

"Rogers!" the producer yells.

Steve can feel all the girls' eyes on him as he makes his way to the front of the gang, like a ship bobbing on the sea now, instead of a minnow struggling against the current.

His letter is from Bucky. After Kathy's news this week, Steve takes it with shaking hands and retreats instantly to his dressing room to read it in private while he gets into costume.

He's relieved that Bucky seems to be in good spirits. He grouses about the food and talks for a while about how his gun training really took, and he's actually got quite an eye according to the Colonel.

Steve pulls on his tights and does up some of the more fiddly buttons while he tries to imagine Bucky being good with a gun. The only weapon Steve has ever seen Bucky use is charm. He also tries not to think about what kinds of things Bucky is leaving out of his letters. Like who he's been shooting to garner the Colonel's praise, or how bad things must be if he's spent half his letter talking about how much he hates hash instead of really saying anything about what's happening to him. Even on paper, Steve can tell when Bucky is lying.

Not that Steve can fault Bucky for it. Steve's in his own glass house when it comes to lies of omission. He's written Bucky four letters and two post cards since the serum. He's told Bucky that he's joined a traveling team that pushes war bonds. He's never mentioned the serum, or Captain America, or the fact that he pushes war bonds as the head pony in a dog and pony show. Every time he puts pen to paper he tries. But "So, I let a German Scientist experiment on me, he got shot dead in front of me and now I'm a chorus girl" is hard to break to someone gently.

Steve finishes the letter and leaves it on the counter of his vanity before he finally looks up into the mirror to make sure he's got the bottom part of his costume done up right. He's been trying to avoid mirrors for the last few months. They make him uncomfortable. People in the audiences see the flag suit and the flag shield and the pomp and pizazz of Captain America, but only Steve sees himself without all those things. Shirtless in the mirror like this- broad shouldered, healthy, tall, chiseled, blond.

He looks pretty Aryan.

And it's not like he's not grateful. He's never been able to breath so easy, he doesn't get sick to his stomach anymore, he didn't realize that he was color blind until he opened his eyes after the serum and the first thing he did with his USO wages was bye some colored pencils.

But whenever he looks at himself in the mirror like this, and pictures what he used to be, he gets a dark sticky feeling in his chest. He can't put it into words, but it's almost like mourning the death of that ninety pound Irish Catholic invalid and wondering what it says about him that he's grateful that guy is gone.

There's a knock at the door. Steve shakes his head and grabs the top half of his costume.

"Just a minute!"

Kathy usually comes in to help him with his makeup, but Gracie's been doing it for him the last few days. When the first knock is followed by three more little knocks Steve knows that it's Gracie again, and hurries to dress himself faster.

Gracie's knock isn't a request so much as an announcement. Just like the last few days, she's already opening the door, even though Steve hasn't given her permission to come in yet.

"Steve, sweetie? Yah ready for yah makeup?"

Steve hurriedly finishes snapping his costume together before he turns to face the door. Gracie already has her head stuck inside his dressing room. She must think he doesn't see the way she rakes her eyes up his body every time she sees him, but he does. Only a handful of the OSU girls are… _nice girls, _but Gracie is the most shameless about it.

It's not that Steve doesn't like her. She's friendly, with a loud laugh and a bright outlook. She's good with his makeup and she's pleasant to talk to, but when you don't ever talk to girls you develop an image of what they should be. And image that both of the Hallies, Katie, Kathy and Agnes fit into real easily, but that Gracie most definitely does not. She is not a… delicate person. In Minneapolis she'd had several drinks more than was lady-like and told a few of the girls that she had a baby back in Jersey, but her mom was watching it and she was pretending to be the kid's older sister. Steve had wound up carrying her back to the room she shared with a few of the other girls. He still wonders if she remembers the way she had tried to… umm, _grab him_, as he dropped her down onto her bed and left her in the care of Sharon and Millie H.

"Evening, Gracie," Steve says politely. He goes to the door and officially opens it for her. "Come on in."

Gracie pats her rigidly set blonde hair as she walks in and flashes him a wide, white and red smile. Her small turquoise make up kit is hanging from her left hand. "We got a little time tonight. Yah want me to tryan teach yah how to do your own eyelinah again?" She's got the thickest Jersey accent Steve has ever heard in his life. After ten minutes around her he has trouble remembering how the vowel "a" is actually pronounced and which words are supposed to have an "r" in them.

"No, that's alright, Gracie. I'll just let you girls do it."

She pouts her lips out at that and sets her free hand on his shoulder, stepping toward him until she is just a little too close for comfort. "Fine by me. Set yourself down in front of the mirror for me?"

She guides him toward the other side of the small room and presses him down into the wobbly chair that sits in front of the brightly lit mirror, then sits on the counter, right on top of Steve's letter.

"Oh, hey," Steve reaches out, trying to grab the letter before she sits. He's not fast enough, but Gracie slides back down to her feet and pulls the letter out from under herself.

"Oh my. Sorry." She fans herself with it for a moment. Steve resists the urge to grab it back from her. "You gotta sweetheart back home, Stevie?"

"Please don't call me that," Steve answers before he realizes that he should have told her yes. He's not sure that already having a girl in his life would dissuade Gracie, but it would probably dissuade Katie and Millie J.. Not to mention Gretchen, Anna, and Cynthia.

Gracie's ever present grin splits even wider. "That means yes." She pokes a painted nail into Steve's chest and looks at the letter in her hand.

"'Dear Stevie'," she reads with a laugh. "Ahh, she calls you Stevie. 'The Army grub isn't so bad, better than my mama's'… oh."

Gracie finally has the decency to look embarrassed as she folds up the letter and hands it over to him.

"Pal of mine is in the one-oh-seventh," Steve tells her as evenly as he can while he finishes folding the letter and tucks it into the shirt of his costume. "Right up against the German border. Since you asked." He didn't need to add the last part, it was unkind, but Gracie wasn't being polite either.

"Sorry," she says finally. She settles back down on the counter in front of him and quietly pops open her make up case. Steve lifts his face up to her, but keeps his eyes down while she wipes the pancake makeup all over his face.

"So was that a no?" She asks finally.

"What?" Steve asks as he feels the odd tickle of her brushes across his face. She does his make up the same way she does her own, panting her face all one color then drawing all the shadows and highlights back on. Steve doesn't see the point and he hates washing all of it off every night.

" Was that a 'No, you don't have a goyle waiting for you'," Gracie clarifies. Steve hears the brushes settle against he counter with a quiet clatter. Gracie starts blending the highlight and shadow make up in with her finger tips.

Steve sighs, more pointedly than he means to. "No. I don't have a girl."

"Find that hard to believe," Gracie replies.

"And why's that?"

"Because yah tall, handsome, muscular, and sweet. Yah was the the soldier on every goddamn poster they put up, pardon my French, even before yah was Captain America. You ain't ever even tried to touch none of us. You look like a man whose broke a few hearts."

She starts patting rouge onto the apples of his cheeks. It has a different smell than the rest of the makeup, though Steve can't put his finger on what makes it so different.

"I don't go around breaking girl's hearts, Gracie. Not that kind of guy."

"Hmm," Gracie replies as she begins patting rouge on his lips. "Open yah eyes for me?"

Steve does as he's asked. He wishes more dressing rooms had a second chair. He's trying his best not to look down Gracie's blouse, and it's not easy.

Gracie pulls a pencil out of her kit and starts carefully brushing it along his bottom lid. She always does the bottom lid first because Steve's eyes water every time. She does both eyes, and let's Steve pat his eyes dry on his handkerchief before she starts over again on the top lid. She sets the pencil tip to the corner of his eye and stops.

"Oh," she says, like she's just figured something out.

"What?"

It's got to be getting close to show. Steve wishes that Gracie would just hurry up with the stupid make up.

"You ain't the type to break _goyles_ hearts," She says, letting every word roll slowly off her tongue. She flicks his chest, right over his heart, where he'd tucked Bucky's letter. Her finger tip snaps against the paper. "I got it."

Steve shakes his head. "Got what?"

Gracie gives him an exaggerated wink. "Don't worry, sweetie, most of the guys in the USO is like that. I was in a group back in Jersey? Six guys, nearly as handsome as you, all poofs. And they wonder why all the chorus goyles is always single." She pokes the letter again. "_You_ gotta sweetheart overseas like everybody else."

Steve clears his throat. "Thats not… You… you're misunderstanding. I'm not like that."

Gracie shifts on the counter and holds her hands up, placating. "Alright, alright. If you say so. Sorry to offend."

"Can you just…" Steve clears his throat again, then once more. "Do you mind maybe giving me some time to run over the lines? I can do the rest of my make up tonight. I think I've got the hang of it."

Gracie sighs. "Steve, I'm sorry about what I said. I shouldn't have said you might be a poof."

"Gracie, just… just leave me a pencil and go. Okay?"

Gracie leaves a black pencil on the counter, packs up the rest of her kit and leaves. The door clicks behind her with finality.

Steve grabs the pencil and carefully brushes a line over his top lid. He doesn't understand why it's so much more difficult to draw on his own skin than it is to draw on the paper.

It takes him three times as long to do his own make up as it would have to just let Gracie finish it and it's not very good when he does finish. But it's not like he doesn't spend every show in a mask that covers half his face anyway. No one's supposed to notice the make up at all. They shouldn't be able to see whether or not it's perfect.


End file.
